


Let me not thirst with this Hock at my lip

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Doctors & Physicians, F/M, Family, Hangover, Humor, Leslie Knope - Freeform, New Year's Day, New Year's Kiss, Romance, Star Trek: Voyager - Freeform, hermione granger - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-14 05:40:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9164578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: She'd made one resolution every year for the past five. This made 0 for 5 and it was 9:07 am.





	

“This was a terrible idea,” Mary mumbled. The words had been clear inside her head but they had come out more like “Swuz terble ideaah,” the last syllable part moan as she’d tried to open her eyes at the same time. She would have shut them hastily, but doing anything quickly was both impossible and extremely ill-advised. It hadn’t seemed like that much Champagne the night before, but it clearly had been far too much. As muzzy-headed as she was, she expected one of two comments from Jed. She was not wrong. Half-dead but not wrong.

“Oh, you’re a lightweight. An awfully cute one,” he murmured in a soft voice, so that she had to strain to make him out. She was not up to strain.

“Why are you whispering?” she whined, aware she was whining and not caring.

“I was trying to be sensitive,” he replied in his regular tone. She supposed it was his regular tone, it sounded like a bullhorn and a truck reversing. Even his breathing sounded like a bellows. In hell.

“Now you’re too loud. Christ! At least tell me you brought me coffee and Motrin,” she said. She remembered drinking some water before they went to bed but the impact had been minimal and now they had plans to meet his parents and brother for a late New Year’s Day brunch. She had to show up or forever be his girlfriend who was too hung over to come to brunch, but she was his girlfriend who was nearly too hung over to come to brunch and the realization was painful and nauseating. That might also be the hangover.

“I never get hung-over,” he declared brightly, handing her the mug of coffee. She didn’t deserve the lettering “Brightest Witch of Her Year” but she bet Hermione would have known a spell for this and made Ron squirm until she cast it. She blinked and saw Jed observing her. He looked fresh as a daisy, damn him. 

“You don’t drink, Jed,” she said flatly, sipping the coffee. A sugar and no milk and the revitalizing frisson of the caffeine imminent, relief of a sort in sight, she leaned back against the pillows. They were mercifully cool and the mug was warm in her hand,

“True. Point to Phinney. I was just checking how out of it you are,” he said. She hadn’t noticed but he’d set up the little bamboo bed tray across from her and there was a plate with toast and a water bottle and a miraculous little pile of Motrin. She eyed it like a dragon would her hoard. “Happy New Year, by the way.”

“Mmm. Is it? I can’t tell,” she grumbled. She hadn’t removed her eye makeup properly and she was full of regrets she couldn’t even assess the validity of. She knew raccoon was not a flattering look on her though.

“I think it is. You’re here in my bed and last night you kissed me at midnight,” he said. Oh, he was a sweet-talker when he wanted to be.

“I didn’t do anything really embarrassing, right? I mean, I can’t remember and I feel like I remember everything, but you never know. Well, you would, because you didn’t drink. So,” she said. She wasn’t a big drinker and she always resolved to be reasonable on New Year’s Eve and it was five years running now with a miserable hang-over. She told herself it was because she drank so little, regularly, that she couldn’t calibrate how many glasses of Champagne were too many. She told herself but she didn’t believe it and she wished Leslie Knope would give her a binder about it; she was getting too old for this.

“You were adorable,” he said. That was ominous.

“Adorable? Puppies are adorable and kittens and those miniature pigs. Adult women in knock-off designer cocktail dresses are not adorable. Jed. Just tell me. I have to sort of ration the misery of the day—I can’t deal with a revelation much closer to seeing your mother’s expression when we arrive,” she replied. To say his mother was cool towards her was like referring to the Civil War as a bit of a tiff, though the other woman was well-bred enough to channel nearly all of her hostility into a neutrality Switzerland would envy. Jed was familiar with that maneuver though, so it cut no ice with him. Mary had wondered, if he proposed, an _if_ she wanted to be a _when_ more and more, if it would be contingent on an elopement or a destination wedding in some locale his mother would categorically refuse to travel to. She’d heard Manitoba was tolerable in the spring…

“Around 11, you started talking about Star Trek. About Janeway and the Borg Queen. And Sam tried to talk about Rogue One and you cut him off. And you hummed the cantina song all the way home. You really can carry a tune, babe,” he said, smiling at her. He was genuinely happy, she could see that, and she couldn’t help thinking _when_ because this was so good she was greedy for whatever could be more. She’d even put up with his mother and Richmond in May, the country club for the rehearsal dinner and some arch comments about whether her dress really should be white.

“Well. I guess it could be worse,” she said. Sam was an old friend, from internship, and they’d taken their first overnight call together. That bond could withstand nearly anything and a little Champagne-inspired Force-ghost mockery were minor slights. She must have talked about Force-ghosts, she always did. And why Jyn’s mother behaved so oddly…

“I disagree. I don’t think it could have been better, except if you’d maybe not had the fourth… and fifth glasses. It’s nothing the Motrin and coffee, a hot shower and an egg sandwich can’t cure. And there’s time for an episode of Voyager before we have to go,” he said. She decided, then and there, if he didn’t do something romantically corny by Valentine’s Day, she was taking matters into her own hands. She sipped the coffee and took the remote, watching the stars fill the room, reflected in Jed’s eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> I missed New Year's Eve proper for Mercy Street, but I thought having New Year's Day hangover story would make up for it. To be honest, this story was written around the exchange of "I never get hungover/You don't drink" but it took me a whole to decide who'd be talking :) I did my level best to get plenty of pop culture references in, for giggles. And I sincerely hope Manitoba as a wedding destination is not in the cards for Mary and Jed, however lovely it truly is :)


End file.
